Scientific Instrument Society 25th Anniversary Exhibition

09 Boxwood Compass

The wooden leaves of this surveying compass are simply but elegantly decorated and the silvered compass bowl is more elaborately engraved in a style characteristic of 18th-century London makers. Around the centre is the signature “I. COGGS. FLEET STREET: LONDON. Fecit.”

John Coggs was a member of the Pewterers Company but, under the rules of the London guild system, this placed no constraint on his actual trade, and he practised as a mathematical instrument maker and engraver. He is recorded as working from 1718 and his address was given in 1729 as the Globe & Sun over against St Dunstan’s Church in Fleet Street. In 1733 he went into partnership with one of his former apprentices William Wyeth, and this joint venture lasted until 1740.